Pegasus row: SC to hear pleas for probe on April 22

The Supreme Court on Friday said it would hear on April 22 pleas seeking a probe into the alleged unauthorised use of Pegasus spyware for surveillance of journalists among othersA bench of Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh deferred the hearing after solicitor general Tushar Mehta seeking an adjournment said the matter had come up after a long timeSenior advocate Kapil Sibal appearing for the petitioners said only two petitions were listed on Friday and there were other connected petitions which required a hearingThe bench directed the registry to fix all the matters on the issue on April 22On August 25 2022 the top court said the technical panel appointed by it to probe the unauthorised use of Pegasus found some malware in five of 29 examined cellphones but it could not be held that the Israeli spyware was usedAfter perusing the report submitted by former apex court Justice R V Raveendran the top court said the Central government did not cooperate with the Pegasus probeThe top court in 2021 ordered a probe into the allegations of the use of Israeli spyware by government agencies for targeted surveillance of politicians journalists and activists and appointed technical and supervisory committees to examine the matterThe overseeing panel has submitted a lengthy threepart report one of which suggested amending the law to protect citizens right to privacy and ensure the nations cyber security it had saidThe technical panel which included three experts on cyber security digital forensics networks and hardware was asked to inquire investigate and determine whether Pegasus spyware was used for snooping on citizens and their probe would be monitored by RaveendranThe panel members were Naveen Kumar Chaudhary Prabaharan P and Ashwin Anil GumasteJustice Raveendran who headed the monitoring panel was assisted by former IPS officer Alok Joshi and cyber security expert Sundeep Oberoi in monitoring the inquiry of the technical panelThe apex court in its order had said the probe panel would be empowered to enquire and investigate what steps or actions were taken by the Centre after reports were published in 2019 on the hacking of WhatsApp accounts of Indian citizens using the Pegasus suite of spywareAlso whether any Pegasus suite was acquired by the Union of India or any state government or any central or state agency for use against the citizens of India it addedAn international media consortium had reported that over 300 verified Indian cellphone numbers were on the list of potential targets for surveillance using the Pegasus spywareThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever